Tag Archives: Will Jennings

♫ Where Are You Christmas? ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Global Issues, History, music

I don’t think I am alone … no, I know I am not alone … in feeling a certain sadness, a lack of joy this holiday season, as I watch what is happening not only in the U.S., but in countries around the globe.  Listening to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tonight, I have to wonder how any of us can turn our heads from the plight of the Ukrainian people and the women in Iran while we go on with our celebrations, delight in gifts both given and received, fill our bellies with traditional treats while knowing that for some, a treat would be heat for their home, a slice of bread for their belly.  I simply have no holiday spirit, no Joie de vivre, this year.  I am trying my best to don a happy face, to smile at the right times, but inside … my heart is breaking for the people of the world.

Anyway, this song was in my mind today, and so …

Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You? is a song co-written by James Horner and Will Jennings for the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 2000. In the film, it is first sung by Taylor Momsen, who played Cindy Lou Who.

Mariah Carey co-wrote a full-length version of the song with additional lyrics, renamed Where Are You Christmas?, for the film’s soundtrack. The song was originally recorded by Carey, but because of a legal case with her ex-husband Tommy Mottola, it could not be released, so it was re-recorded and released by Faith Hill. A CD single of Hill’s rendition was released December 11, 2000. A video was released featuring Hill singing from the Grinch’s mountaintop home, interspersed with clips from the film and a cameo appearance by Momsen as Cindy Lou Who.

Where Are You Christmas
Faith Hill

Oh, hmm
Where are you Christmas
Why can’t I find you
Why have you gone away
Where is the laughter
You used to bring me
Why can’t I hear music play

My world is changing
I’m rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too

Where are you Christmas
Do you remember
The one you used to know
I’m not the same one
See what the time’s done
Is that why you have let me go

Christmas is here
Everywhere, oh
Christmas is here
If you care, oh

If there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time

Oh, I feel you Christmas
I know I’ve found you
You never fade away, oh
The joy of Christmas
Stays here inside us
Fills each and every heart with love

Where are you Christmas
Fill your heart with love

Songwriters: James Horner / Mariah Carey / Wilbur Jennings
Where Are You Christmas lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

♫ I’ll Never Love This Way Again ♫

Posted on by under music

I planned to post Glenn Yarbrough’s 1965 Baby the Rain Must Fall, after being told yesterday that “Into every life a little rain must fall, unless you happen to live in the Atacama Desert.”  But, once I listened to the song for the first time in probably 50 years, I decided that I really didn’t like it all that much, so … back to square one. Next I tried to find a song about the Atacama Desert, but to no avail.  And so, I just fiddled around with some of my favourite artists and struck paydirt when I got to Dionne Warwick!

According to SongFacts …

Will Jennings wrote this with Richard Kerr, who first recorded the song on his album Welcome To The Club. Jennings is a lyricist who has worked with Steve Winwood, Roy Orbison, Eric Clapton and many others. Kerr is a pianist who wrote the music for Barry Manilow’s first hit “Mandy” and teamed up with Jennings to write Manilow’s songs “Looks Like We Made It” and “Somewhere In The Night.” Jennings told us: “Sometime, sooner or later, you reach a height that you never reached and you never will reach again – and this is the story.”

Explaining what fuels his songwriting, Jennings says, “You have to sit down and write sometime, but it all comes out of life and experience, like any other kind of writing. I travel, look into things. Go out and listen to music. Go to plays. Go to places I haven’t been and places I like to re-visit. Have a good time, drink wine, eat good food, stay up late, dance.”

This won the 1979 Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.  The song hit #6 in Canada, #5 in the U.S., and only #62 in the UK.

I’ll Never Love This Way Again
Dionne Warwick

You looked inside my fantasies and made each one come true
Something no one else, had ever found, a way to do
I’ve kept the memories one by one, since you took me in
I know I’ll never love this way again

I know I’ll never love this way again
So I keep holdin’ on, before the good is gone
I know I’ll never love this way again
Hold on, hold on, hold on

A fool will lose tomorrow reaching back for yesterday
I won’t turn my head in sorrow if you should go away
I’ll stand here and remember just how good it’s been
And I know I’ll never love this way again

I know I’ll never love this way again
So I keep holdin’ on before the good is gone
I know I’ll never love this way again
Hold on, hold on, hold on

I know I’ll never love this way again
So I keep holdin’ on before the good is gone
I know I’ll never love this way again
Hold on, hold on, hold on

I know I’ll never, love this way again
So I keep holdin’ on before the good is gone
I know I’ll never love this way again
Hold on, hold on, hold on

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Will Jennings / Richard Kerr
I’ll Never Love This Way Again lyrics © Irving Music, Inc.

♫ Up Where We Belong ♫

Posted on by under music

I have only played this one once here on da blog, back in 2018, so it should seem new to you, right?  I actually had another Stevie Wonder song on the docket for tonight, but something made me go with this one instead.

I’ve always loved this song, loved the voices of Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker, but until I first researched it a few years ago, I did not realize it was the theme song to the movie An Officer And A Gentleman.  But it almost wasn’t …

Once the song was recorded, the film’s director, Taylor Hackford said that “the final version was absolute magic—or at least Joel (Joel Sill, who was head of music at Paramount at the time) and I thought so.”  But, when they presented the song to the executives at Paramount, Michael Eisner and Don Simpson, they hated the record and said it would never be a hit.  But, as time was running out and the budget had long since run out, the two ultimately agreed and the song was released as a single on 22 July 1982, to promote the movie, which was released six days later.

Will Jennings wrote the lyrics. He’s responsible for the words to many famous songs, including My Heart Will Go On, Looks Like We Made It, and many of Steve Winwood’s hits.  Of the lyrics he says …

“I am a working class person and these people in the film trying to make it, they are my people. The mountain imagery is about striving for the top – people often don’t hear the lyric right – it is ‘Where eagles cry, on a mountain high’ instead of ‘Where eagles fly, on a mountain high’ – if you have ever heard an eagle cry, the power and beauty of it and all the wild freedom of it, you will get the distinction. As far as “All I know is the way I feel…’ well, if you have nothing else to tell you what to do in your life, you have to go with the way you feel… if you are lost, you have only your instinct and passion to guide you.”

Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Saint-Marie wrote the score for the movie and the music for this song; they got married the following year.

Joe Cocker’s life and career could cover an entire post … or a few.  Sadly, he died in 2014 of lung cancer.

Up Where We Belong
Joe Cocker/Jennifer Warnes

Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
When it’s real, I keep it alive

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world below
Up where the clear winds blow

Some hang on to used to be
Live their lives looking behind
All we have is here and now
All our lives, out there to find

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Time goes by
No time to cry
Life’s you and I
Alive today

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong

Songwriters: Jack Nitzsche / Buffy Saint-Marie / Will Jennings
Up Where We Belong lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

♫ Didn’t We Almost Have It All ♫

Posted on by under music

I’ve played many of Whitney Houston’s best songs, but turns out I haven’t played this one!  This song, written by Michael Masser and Will Jennings and released in 1987, was the fifth of seven consecutive US #1 hits for Houston.  

According to Will Jennings …

“I think that probably took longer than any other song. Michael was traveling and he was in the studio and doing this and that, so I think it was about a year or two after we started it that it was finished. And I sort of lost track of the whole thing. It was one of those never-to-be-repeated experiences, because he was producing the record and he wanted to really nail it down. He kept feeling it wasn’t finished and so he’d put it away, and I was off working on something. I’d lost track of what went on with it.”

There are two main versions of the song, and I shall play both here. My favourite is the first, for while I usually prefer a live version, like the energy and emotion that comes through in the artist’s body language and facial expressions, in this case the live version, from her September 2, 1987 concert in Saratoga Springs, New York, is a bit too melancholy to suit me.

Didn’t We Almost Have It All
Song by Whitney Houston

Remember when we held on in the rain
The night we almost lost it
Once again we can take the night into tomorrow
Living on feelings
Touching you I feel it all again

Didn’t we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living
Didn’t we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you’ll never love that way again
Didn’t we almost have it all

The way you used to touch me felt so fine
We kept our hearts together down the line
A moment in the soul can last forever
Comfort and keep us
Help me bring the feeling back again

Didn’t we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living
Didn’t we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you’ll never love that way again
Didn’t we almost have it all

Didn’t we have the best of times
When love was young and new?
Couldn’t we reach inside and find
The world of me and you?
We’ll never lose it again
‘Cause once you know what love is
You never let it end

Didn’t we almost have it all
When love was all we had worth giving?
The ride with you was worth the fall my friend
Loving you makes life worth living

Didn’t we almost have it all
The night we held on till the morning
You know you’ll never love that way again
Didn’t we almost have it all

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Michael Masser / Will Jennings
Didn’t We Almost Have It All lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

♫ Higher Love ♫

Posted on by under music

The inspiration for tonight’s song comes from Joe Biden & Kamala Harris’ victory speech earlier tonight from Wilmington, Delaware, where they played this after giving their speeches.  It seemed as good as any to celebrate what I see as a chance to restore unity, sanity and compassion to this nation.

Released in 1986 by Steve Winwood, Higher Love was written by Winwood and Will Jennings and produced by Russ Titelman and Winwood. The female vocals on the song were performed by Chaka Khan, who also appeared in the promotional music video.

This was Winwood’s first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song, topping the chart for one week.  The song earned two Grammy Awards, for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. It also peaked at number 13 in the United Kingdom, Winwood’s highest charting solo entry there, and reached number one in Canada for a week.

Whitney Houston covered the song in 1990, and in June 2019 Norwegian DJ Kygo reworked Houston’s cover into a tropical house track and it was released as a single worldwide.  On August 21, 2019, their version hit number one on Billboard magazine’s Dance Club Songs chart, making it Houston’s highest-charting posthumous release to date, and hit #2 in the Uk, even better than Winwood’s.

I like both the Winwood version and the Whitney Houston/Kygo one, so I thought I’d just play both and let you pick one or listen to both.

Higher Love
Steve Winwood; Whitney Houston, Kygo

Think about it, there must be a higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is wasted time
Look inside your heart, and I’ll look inside mine

Things look so bad everywhere
In this whole world, what is fair?
We walk the line and try to see
Fallin’ behind in what could be, oh

Bring me a higher love
Bring me a higher love, oh
Bring me a higher love
Where’s that higher love I keep thinking of?

That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, oh
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me a higher love

That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, oh
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me a higher love

Worlds are turnin’, and we’re just hanging on
Facing our fear, and standin’ out there alone
A yearning, yeah, and it’s real to me
There must be someone who’s feeling for me

Things look so bad everywhere
In this whole world, what is fair?
We walk the line and try to see
Fallin’ behind in what could be, oh

Bring me a higher love (oh my Lord)
Bring me a higher love, oh (oh)
Bring me a higher love (my Lord)
It’s that higher love I keep thinking of

That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, oh
That love, that love
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love
Bring me a higher love

oh, bring me love
(Bring me a higher love, oh) we need a higher love
(Bring me a higher love) bring me, bring me, yeah
A higher love I keep thinking of, oh

That love, that love (bring me a higher love)
Bring me higher love, love
That love, that love (bring me a higher love)
Bring me higher love, oh
That love, that love (bring me a higher love)
Bring me higher love, love
A higher love I keep thinking of

Bring me a higher love (that love, that love)
(Bring me higher love, love)
Bring me a higher love (that love, that love)
(Bring me higher love) oh

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Steve Winwood / Will Jennings
Higher Love lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

♫ Where Are You Christmas? ♫

Posted on by under music

It started with rawgod telling me of a couple of his friend Gail’s favourite songs, the first on the list being Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer, which I played a few nights ago, as it also has special meaning for me!  And then I thought, what the heck, why not ask for a few fun, non-religious, Christmas-themed song requests, and I now have a list!  I promise that I will be playing each and every one of them over the next week, even if I need to double up on the music posts!  But tonight, I am playing my own request.

I don’t think I am alone … no, I know I am not alone … in feeling a certain sadness, a lack of joy this holiday season, as I watch what is happening not only in the U.S., but in countries around the globe.  I simply have no holiday spirit, no Joie de vivre, this year.  I had to be practically dragged out to shop, to get a tree, and while I’m usually a joyous holiday baker, I have made only a few things, most of which didn’t turn out right this year.  Thank you, Donald Trump and cronies.

Anyway, this song was in my mind today, and so …

Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You? is a song co-written by James Horner and Will Jennings for the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 2000. In the film, it is first sung by Taylor Momsen, who played Cindy Lou Who.

Mariah Carey co-wrote a full-length version of the song with additional lyrics, renamed Where Are You Christmas?, for the film’s soundtrack. The song was originally recorded by Carey, but because of a legal case with her ex-husband Tommy Mottola, it could not be released, so it was re-recorded and released by Faith Hill. A CD single of Hill’s rendition was released December 11, 2000. A video was released featuring Hill singing from the Grinch’s mountaintop home, interspersed with clips from the film and a cameo appearance by Momsen as Cindy Lou Who.

Where Are You Christmas
Faith Hill

Oh, hmm
Where are you Christmas
Why can’t I find you
Why have you gone away
Where is the laughter
You used to bring me
Why can’t I hear music play

My world is changing
I’m rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too

Where are you Christmas
Do you remember
The one you used to know
I’m not the same one
See what the time’s done
Is that why you have let me go

Christmas is here
Everywhere, oh
Christmas is here
If you care, oh

If there is love in your heart and your mind
You will feel like Christmas all the time

Oh, I feel you Christmas
I know I’ve found you
You never fade away, oh
The joy of Christmas
Stays here inside us
Fills each and every heart with love

Where are you Christmas
Fill your heart with love

Songwriters: James Horner / Mariah Carey / Wilbur Jennings
Where Are You Christmas lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, BMG Rights Management

♫ Tears In Heaven ♫

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I am not a fan of Eric Clapton, but this one … this one is a song that has depth, has meaning, has staying power, that has that “bring you to tears” capability.

In August 1990, Clapton’s manager, two of his roadies and his friend and fellow musician Stevie Ray Vaughan were killed in a helicopter accident.  Seven months later, in March 1991, Clapton’s 4-year-old son Conor died after falling from the 53rd-floor window of a New York City apartment belonging to Conor’s mother, Italian television personality Lory del Santo.

In a 2005 interview with Mojo, Clapton said Conor’s death “threw me into … a wobble,” and in the immediate aftermath of the accident, he coped by throwing himself into his work — most notably by contributing a trio of new songs to the soundtrack of the 1991 movie Rush, including Tears in Heaven, the Grammy-winning hit ballad inspired by the immense grief of his loss.

Clapton wrote this with Will Jennings, who has written many famous songs from movies, including Up Where We Belong from An Officer And A Gentleman and My Heart Will Go On from Titanic. Jennings wrote the lyrics to many of Steve Winwood’s hits and has also written with B.B. King, Roy Orbison, The Crusaders, Peter Wolf and many others.  According to Jennings …

“Eric and I were engaged to write a song for a movie called Rush. We wrote a song called ‘Help Me Up’ for the end of the movie… then Eric saw another place in the movie for a song and he said to me, ‘I want to write a song about my boy.’ Eric had the first verse of the song written, which, to me, is all the song, but he wanted me to write the rest of the verse lines and the release (‘Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees…’), even though I told him that it was so personal he should write everything himself. He told me that he had admired the work I did with Steve Winwood and finally there was nothing else but do to as he requested, despite the sensitivity of the subject. This is a song so personal and so sad that it is unique in my experience of writing songs.”

Clapton wasn’t sure he wanted this song to be released at all, but the director of Rush, Lili Zanuck, convinced him to use it in the film. “Her argument was that it might in some way help somebody, and that got my vote,” Clapton said.

Tears In Heaven
Eric Clapton

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on
‘Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?
I’ll find my way through night and day
‘Cause I know I just can’t stay here in heaven

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart, have you begging please, begging please

Beyond the door there’s peace I’m sure
And I know there’ll be no more tears in heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on
‘Cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven

Songwriters: Eric Patrick Clapton / Will Jennings
Tears In Heaven lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group, Songtrust Ave, BMG Rights Management

♫ Up Where We Belong ♫

Posted on by under music

Earlier this week I wrote a post, the title of which was Who Knows What Tomorrow Brings, a line from this song.  Well, as these things happen, the song got stuck in my head … I seem to have given myself an earworm, and the only way I know of to exorcise it is to share it with my friends!  I’ve always loved this song, loved the voices of Jennifer Warnes and Joe Cocker, but I did not realize it was the theme song to the movie An Officer And A Gentleman.  But it almost wasn’t …

Once the song was recorded, the film’s director, Taylor Hackford said that “the final version was absolute magic—or at least Joel (Joel Sill, who was head of music at Paramount at the time) and I thought so.”  But, when they presented the song to the executives at Paramount, Michael Eisner and Don Simpson, they hated the record and said it would never be a hit.  But, as time was running out and the budget had long since run out, the two ultimately agreed and the song was released as a single on 22 July 1982, to promote the movie, which was released six days later.

Will Jennings wrote the lyrics. He’s responsible for the words to many famous songs, including My Heart Will Go On, Looks Like We Made It, and many of Steve Winwood’s hits.  Of the lyrics he says …

“I am a working class person and these people in the film trying to make it, they are my people. The mountain imagery is about striving for the top – people often don’t hear the lyric right – it is ‘Where eagles cry, on a mountain high’ instead of ‘Where eagles fly, on a mountain high’ – if you have ever heard an eagle cry, the power and beauty of it and all the wild freedom of it, you will get the distinction. As far as “All I know is the way I feel…’ well, if you have nothing else to tell you what to do in your life, you have to go with the way you feel… if you are lost, you have only your instinct and passion to guide you.”

Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Saint-Marie wrote the score for the movie and the music for this song; they got married the following year.

Joe Cocker’s life and career could cover an entire post … or a few.  Sadly, he died in 2014 of lung cancer.

Up Where We Belong
Joe Cocker/Jennifer Warnes

Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
When it’s real, I keep it alive

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world below
Up where the clear winds blow

Some hang on to used to be
Live their lives looking behind
All we have is here and now
All our lives, out there to find

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Time goes by
No time to cry
Life’s you and I
Alive today

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong

Songwriters: Jack Nitzsche / Buffy Saint-Marie / Will Jennings
Up Where We Belong lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC